


The Only Safe Place He Knows

by coruscantspark



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Assassination Attempt(s), Gen, Healing, dagger wounds, essek gets hurt, essek is a loose end for the assembly, jester isn't okay, there is a violent bit at the beginning, there was supposed to be fluff in here, wizards being tender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:34:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25592860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coruscantspark/pseuds/coruscantspark
Summary: Essek is now a loose end and the Cerberus Assembly has no need for him anymore. When he gets attacked, he flees to the only place he knows is safe.
Comments: 12
Kudos: 118





	The Only Safe Place He Knows

**Author's Note:**

> I would like to reiterate, there is some violence at the beginning followed by the healing/bandaging of wounds, there isn't much but still please take care of yourself and your mind. This was also supposed to get fluffy but then the plague happened and the best I can offer is tenderness. This is completely self-indulgent.

Pain explodes in his back. Essek staggers forward from the force of the blow before whirling around to face the assailant head-on. In the darkness, the only light reflects off the now blood-soaked dagger that is striking out towards him once more and the flash of a smile on the attacker’s face as the dagger makes contact again, just above his heart. Essek gasps at the pain and the sudden jolt of venom that pulses through him with this strike. Vision swimming, he crashes into the wall clutching his chest with one hand. Taking a deep breath, he whispers an arcane phrase and shoves the other hand in front of him. A blast of energy and thunder bursts from him, shoving chairs, the table, and papers flying away from him. The attacker stands firm however and advances on him, daggers shining again in the moonlight. Essek’s mind races wildly, unprepared for the sudden and vicious onslaught. He tries to anticipate the oncoming strike, but his mind is sluggish and limbs heavy as the poison from the dagger continues to flow through him. The dagger lashes out at him again, just as his legs give out and he slides to the floor. 

A curse comes from his attacker as the dagger sinks into the wall where his chest used to be. 

_Higher pitched. Slightly feminine? What language was that?_

Essek catalogs the voice and files it away for later, that part of his mind that never stops being the Shadowhand grounding him to think past the pain. A third burst of pain in his shoulder as the dagger sinks into his shoulder as the assailant leans down and whispers, 

“The Assembly sends their regards and their thanks.” 

_That accent. Where have I heard it?_

Letting go of the dagger currently dripping more poison into Essek’s shoulder, the assassin pulls their other dagger out of the wall and grabs Essek’s hair and forces him to look up at them.

“We’re doing you a favor, really. No chance of anyone learning of your treachery, now you’re just a sad tragedy of a politically ambitious life. I’ll make it look like one of your rivals wanted your position.”

Shoving Essek’s head back down, the assassin readies their other dagger and prepares to strike again. Essek forces himself to concentrate and breathing in deep he manages to whisper the proper arcane words and closes his eyes as the magic swirls around him. Opening his eyes to the familiar sights of the Xhorhouse library, Essek stumbles forward, too weak to ignore the stomach unsettling effects of a teleport spell. He collapses against a bookshelf, knocking what few books were sitting on it to the ground. Clutching his chest, he struggles to get enough air as the room around him continues to spin. Standing becomes too much and his knees give out under him. Hitting the ground hard, he tilts his head back to stare at the ceiling, trying to stop the bleeding that was only made worse with his impact on the floor. Searing pain fills all of him now and he’s not sure he could reliably say where the wounds start and the poison ends. He reaches for the dagger in his shoulder and yanks it out, screaming at the pain. He squints at it, trying to see if it looked familiar before tossing it away.

“You idiot,” he whispers. “You should have seen this coming.” 

The silence of his friends’ home echoes around him. Groaning he fishes through his pockets for copper wire and twists it in the proper movements to begin a sending spell. The somatic movements required by the spell cause the wounds to burn white-hot and his vision begin to tunnel.

_I need help, but who, who haven’t I destroyed. Maybe, maybe she’ll take pity..._

“Jester...please...there was an incident...I...need your help...I’m...in your library”

Talking was brutal, each word another knife to the wounds. He only hopes the message gets through as the darkness takes over and he slips into unconsciousness.

  
_____________________________________________________________________

The early evening Nicodranus sun was slowly slipping towards the horizon and Caleb blinked out of his intense study to a drastically darkening room at the Lavish Chateau. He stretches his hunched over back and looks around the room. Jester sits across the room in the golden sun, an intense look of concentration on her face as she paints. He hadn’t heard her come in, the book he was studying was so attention capturing he’d lost track of time, and apparently perception of his surroundings. The landscape she’s nearing completion on seems familiar but he can’t quite catch the details as the lantern near her slowly fades down to a dull light. Caleb smiles watching as her eyes dart over and a whispered word from flares it back to a brighter flame. 

Reaching into a pocket, he rubs some phosphorus between his hands and whispers an arcane word and pulls his hands apart and four globes of an amber light dance between his hands. With a flick of his hands, two of the globes float over to Jester. She looks up and smiles at him before returning to work, not breaking the peaceful silence of the evening.

Caleb goes back to his reading before startled once more by a gasp from across the room.

  
______________________________________________________________________

Jester had joined Caleb in one of their rooms at the Chateau after spending most of the afternoon with her mother. The others had all gone exploring the city some more but Jester had decided to stay in and enjoy the peaceful early evening that would descend upon the Chateau before it opened for the evening’s festivities. The light near her gradually fades down and she looks at it and concentrates, flaring it back to a brighter flame when two lights dance above her. She smiles at Caleb before turning back to her painting when a sudden voice in her head jolts her out of her concentration.

“Jester...please...there was an incident...I...need your help...I’m...in your library”

The voice rings familiar in her mind. She drops her brush with a gasp and stands, “Essek? What do you mean? Are you okay?”

Hands clasped to her chest, she stares unseeing out the window and waits for another message. Silence rings loudly while she waits. Whirling around, she locks eyes with Caleb who had stood with her and is now looking at her questioningly.

“Caleb! I think something bad has happened. Essek, he sounded in pain. He said he was in our library?”

Caleb was already pulling out chalk, “We’ll go at once, do you have your stuff with you?”

Jester hesitates before rushing out of the room. Caleb starts marking out the sigil for the circle in the Lucid Bastion waiting for Jester to return to mark the last glyph. Jester runs back in and stands in the circle and grabs his hand. 

“Let’s go, Caleb, I’m worried.”

He nods and finishes the incantation and they are pulled through space and land in the Lucid Bastion. The guards give them a curious look as they run out of the room. The two of them draw more attention than normal as they run through the halls, dodging what few people roam the halls late at night as they race to get outside. The pair stop and catch their breath as they stumble into the ever-night sky of Rosohna. 

“Caleb, we need to be faster!” Jester pants, leaning a hand against the wall.

“Ja, I know,” Caleb looks around, and seeing little foot traffic closes his eyes and concentrates for a moment and his form morphs into a giant eagle and starts hovering impatiently.

“Oh, good idea!” 

Jester grabs her holy symbol and in a moment two eagles take off racing for the Xhorhouse. They land in Caduceus’ tower, stumbling as they transform back into their regular bodies and rush down the stairs, Jester jumping the last three and calling for Essek as she runs towards the library.

The door bangs open as Jester, followed closely by Caleb, burst into the room. Books were knocked over, the table was pushed askew, and there laying in a pile of purple robes was a bloodied and barely breathing Essek.

“Essek? Oh my gosh, Essek!”

Jester falls to her knees beside Essek and grabs his hand as Caleb slides past, throwing lights dancing above them and gently cradling Essek’s head in his lap. He looks up and whispers, “Jester, please -”

Jester already had her eyes shut and was whispering a prayer as healing magic flowed from her hand into the injured drow before her. Essek groans but doesn’t open his eyes.

“Jester?”

Jester opens her eyes at the weak whisper and squeezes the hand she’s holding.

“Yeah, it’s me. And Caleb. We came as quickly as we could.”

Gray eyes slowly blink open. A sigh of relief exhales from Essek before he tries to sit up, groaning again at the pain of movement.

“Careful, friend. You’ve taken quite a beating.” Caleb places a cautionary hand on the uninjured shoulder. “No need to rush, we’ve got you now.” 

He offers himself as a brace while Jester gently pulls Essek into a sitting position. 

“Oh dear, that was perhaps too much too quickly,” Essek’s face turns a little grayer.

Jester’s eyes widen and she casts another healing spell into him, just to be safe.

“What happened, Essek? Where are you hurt? Who did this to you?”

Essek sways back against Caleb and closes his eyes again. 

“Maybe give the man a moment to wake up, Jester. He is not on the road as often as we are. He does not usually endure such injuries.”

Jester purses her lips in thought and slips out of the library with a quick, “Be right back, don’t stand up without me!”

Caleb shifts the two of them to gently lean Essek against a bookshelf, cradling Essek’s head in his hands to check for injuries there before resting it against the shelf, releasing him and continuing his visual inspection down, taking in scrapes and abrasions but looking for the more serious injuries. Essek sighs and keeps his eyes closed, but his voice is rough when he speaks.

“Shoulder, left side. Chest, just above the heart. Back, upper left,” He meets Caleb's eyes. “Thank you for coming, I was...not sure you would.”

Caleb ducks his head to inspect the shoulder wound. “Of course we came, Essek, we are allies,” He takes a breath and glances back up to Essek’s face, “Friends. We protect our own. I am just sorry we couldn’t get here quicker. Brace yourself, this will not be pleasant.”

The shine of unshed tears Essek’s eyes glints in the soft amber light before he nods and leans forward. 

Caleb scoots around to Essek’s front and begins the arduous process of removing the outer mantle, pushing it to fall off of the good shoulder and gathering as much of the heavy material he can into his lap before gently peeling it off of the injured shoulder. The pull of the fabric against his injured back causes a harsh gasp from Essek and he drops his forehead to Caleb’s shoulder when Caleb freezes and then moves even slower. 

Jester walks in with a box of bandages and healing herbs and sees Essek curled into a tense ball around Caleb breathing harshly, while the other man tries to get his ruined clothes off without hurting him more. She steps quickly over and places a hand gently on Essek’s shoulder. He looks up at her, pain clouding his eyes.

“Hi, I raided everyone’s stash for some bandages,” she sits down and wipes an escaped tear from Esseks’ cheek. “Don’t worry, they’re mostly clean!” She winks when he huffs out a small laugh and lowers his head to Caleb’s shoulder again. “Caleb, you should have waited for me, I can help.”

“Ah well, I have only gotten as far as the mantle. He’s injured mostly on the left side, near the heart.”

Jester's hands were light as her fingers danced up Esseks’s right arm and shoulder. “Yep, nothing there, lemme check your ribs.” Her hands hover over Essek’s right side when he doesn’t say anything. “Essek, is it okay if I check your ribs on this side?” His head nods but doesn’t leave Caleb’s shoulder. She gently pokes at his side until satisfied that his injuries didn’t extend to the side she was sitting. With a twirl of skirts, she swings around to his back and winces at what she sees just in the barest glimpse of exposed skin from torn garments. She gently pokes the tear open a little more, seeing the green-black veins extending from the wound. “Hey, Essek? Are you feeling sick, like I'm going to throw up everywhere and the world is spinning sick or just the normal like ow everything hurts really bad and that’s why standing and sitting are too hard right now?” 

He mumbles from Caleb’s collarbone, “The first one, definitely. But also the second.” He trails off and then sits upright with a grunt, “There was liquid on the daggers that wasn’t my...I think there was poison.”

Jester nods and pushes his head back down to Caleb’s shoulder and her face doesn’t stop grimacing as she nods over at Caleb and drags the box around beside her. Pausing to scoop up her holy symbol she quietly casts a small restorative spell and the greenish sickness that had been pulsing slightly under his skin fades. Essek sighs as the poison fades. 

“Oh, everything hurts so much worse now,” Essek groans but lifts his head again. “However, I don’t think I’m going to throw up anymore.” He manages a weak thumbs up from his right arm. 

“This would be preferable, my friend, since I would get the brunt of it.” Caleb laughs and gently grabs the floundering hand and holds it to his chest. “Hold still while Jester fixes you up.”

Jester giggles as she pulls out a pair of shears and piles of bandages and rags from the box. “Alright Essek, I’m going to have to cut your shirt off, but don’t worry, I’ll be very careful and then I have this other very soft shirt you can put on that I never wear. But your injuries are too much in the taking off of the shirt motion area to actually be able to take it off, no matter how slowly Caleb does it.”

Essek sighs and buries his head in Caleb’s shoulder once more.

“Do it.”

Carefully, Jester begins the process of cutting the fabric and slowly peeling panels of fabric from the drying wounds across Essek’s back and shoulder. Caleb presses his cheek to Essek’s temple and endures the vice grip the other man has on his hand during the arduous process softly whispering in Zemnian. Jester takes a clean rag and empty bowl and summons water in it before holding it out expectantly towards Caleb. He moves his hand from where it was smoothing Essek’s hair and heats the water in the bowl before whispering, “This will not feel good, my friend.” Essek shudders against him as Jester cleans the injury on his back and bandages it, but doesn’t make another sound as she places a gentle hand on his back.

“Essek, don’t hold your breath you’ll pass out again.”

He releases his breath with a giant exhale. “Sorry.”

She repeats the process with the shoulder and then motions for Caleb to switch spots with her so she can take care of the front. Caleb gently pushes Essek off of him and scoots around to the other side. The injured man grumbles but sits up of his own accord, swaying slightly and grunting as the rest of his shirt gets cut away and the wound is cleaned and dressed. Jester grabs a clean rag and gently cleans the blood and grime away from all of the uninjured skin now exposed. She looks up into his face where tears are falling once more. She cups his face in her hands and wipes the tears with her thumb. 

“Essek, I am so sorry there’s only so much that magical healing can do, it’s going to hurt for a while. I wish I could take it all from you.”

Essek shakes his head and whispers, “You came to help me. All I have done is bring you pain and yet you came.” Jester’s eyes well with tears too as she gently leans her forehead to his. 

They sit in silence for a moment before she draws back and gently tilts his head to look at her, “Essek, loving someone means loving them no matter what. You messed up, sure. That doesn’t mean we don’t love you anymore, it just means you messed up. You aren’t perfect, Essek. No one is.” Her eyes twinkle as she whispers, “Not even the Umavis of your dens or even the Bright Queen herself are perfect.” She stands up holding the tattered remains of his clothes and the water bowl. “And besides, even if we hated your guts, we wouldn’t leave you to bleed out on the floor of our library. Caleb gets mopey if his library is disturbed.” She wiggles her eyebrows and swishes out of the room as Essek huffs out a laugh. 

Caleb picks up the soft robe that Jester had left behind and gently wraps it around Essek’s shoulders. Resting his warm hand softly on the uninjured shoulder he asks, “Are you good to stand? Or should we wait for the strong one to return?”

Essek concentrates for a moment and then slowly hovers an inch or so above the ground. “This should help, no?”

Caleb smiles and shakes his head before gesturing towards his room off the library. “Will you go of your own accord or am I to guide you along like a kite?”

Essek snorts and floats to the bed and collapses into it, eyes already drooping shut. Caleb grabs his blankets and pulls it up over Essek. He places a hand to the man's forehead, breath catching for a moment. He turns to leave when a hand grabs his own.

“Stay, please.”

Caleb hesitates a moment before slipping into the bed alongside Essek and extinguishing his lights. 

“It was an agent of the Cerberus Assembly. They were to make it look like a political assassination from one of my own seeking my position. The voice was higher pitched, and an accent similar to your own. Their dagger is in the library somewhere.”

Essek’s voice, softened with sleep, cuts through the darkness.

“Don’t worry about that tonight, Essek. Rest and let your injuries heal,” Caleb whispers back. “We’ll figure it out in the morning.”

The silence grows as they lie there in the quiet. Then Essek flails a hand over to Caleb’s arm.

“Are you still wearing your coat?”

“Shut up.”

Caleb waits for Essek’s breathing to even out before quietly slipping out of the bed and into the library. The light of a small candle barely illuminates the room but the glint of a blade catches his eye. He picks it up with the edge of his coat and inspects it closely. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. A quick detection spell confirms it. Shaking his head, he places it on a shelf and returns to bed, slipping his coat and bloodied shirt off and replacing it with a clean shirt. His mind races with the possibilities of what could have happened today. Essek’s hand finds his own and holds on. Caleb grips it tighter and wills himself to sleep.

Jester carries the bloodied clothing scraps and dirtied water into the kitchen and very carefully places them both on a table. With deliberate and stilted motions she discards the dirty water and refills the bowl and places the rags inside. She stares for a moment at the bloodied rags of Essek’s robes and smoke starts to rise from the pile. Her breathing intensifies and the rags burst into flames. She sags against the countertops and goes through the motions of a sending message and pastes a smile on her face.

“Hi Beau, Caleb and I had to run back to the Xhorhouse. We’ll be back tomorrow and I’ll explain everything then. We’re bringing a friend!”

“Jester? We were getting concerned, Frumpkin is being really obnoxious and we couldn’t find you guys anywhere. This better be a good story. A friend?”

Jester sinks to the ground and brings shaking hands to her mouth to silence her cries. She can’t unhear the echo of Essek’s desperate voice in her head, can’t unsee the pile of blood and robes and Essek waiting for her in their library. She gasps a pained breath, and then another, and another as she forces the tears to stop. Swiping at her face to clean the tears away, she continues to clean up, scrubbing furiously at the bloodied rags and batting away any traitorous teardrops that fall from her eyes. When she’s finally satisfied, she hangs them to dry. Tiptoeing into Caleb’s room, she peeks in to see the two wizards passed out on the bed, Caleb gripping Essek’s hand tightly in a fitful sleep. She quickly runs upstairs and grabs blankets and bedding and drags it down to the library. Setting up camp quietly in the doorway to Caleb’s room, she pulls out her sketchbook and begins to draw, ready for the long night.

**Author's Note:**

> Almost all of these spells are accurate to what they characters would be able to do, except for Jessie's spontaneous combustion at the end, I don't think Sacred Flame would burn like that (but we can pretend!) and Flame Strike seemed to draw too much attention lol
> 
> For those curious:
> 
> Essek casts a Thunderwave, Teleport, and Sending.  
> Caleb casts Dancing Lights, Teleportation Circle, uses his Transmuter ability to Polymorph, and Detect Magic  
> Jester casts Thamaturgy, Polymorph, multiple uses of Cure Wounds, Lesser Restoration, and we're going to pretend that Sacred Flame will burn stuff :)


End file.
